Chairman NHAI launches new website and PMIS Mobile App

Says it will soon become possible for the public to rate National Highways and view the real-time status of any NH project

The Chairman of National Highways Authority of India Shri Deepak Kumar launched a world class, new multilingual website of the organization today. He said that within two months it will be possible for the general public to rate National Highways through this website. He also launched a Project Monitoring Information System (PMIS) Moblie App that will facilitate close, in-house monitoring of NHAI projects on a mobile phone. Shri Deepak Kumar said that the NHAI also plans to soon launch a public interface of the PMIS desktop and App versions, so that the general public will be able to view the real-time status of any project across the Highway network. The NHAI website has been developed using state-of-art technologies and provides a centralized platform wherein NHAI’s different software and applications are stitched together and available for browsing in a user friendly manner. Complete information about the organization, HR, projects, policies, videos and project photographs are available on the website. To maintain transparency, the information is in the public domain. Apart from this, as a single point repository of all relevant information, the enterprise applications are mapped to the website, which are for internal use of NHAI.

To ensure timely delivery of its projects, the NHAI is now digitally monitoring them through a state-of-the-art Project Monitoring Information System (PMIS), which has been developed in-house along with The Boston Consulting Group. PMIS has a comprehensive database with over 180 data fields being tracked for each project, and a further 500 fields specifically for complex PPP projects, covering all key progress matrics such as design progress, contracting progress, construction progress, land acquisition, compensation disbursement, toll and traffic information and concession / contract information.

A series of Executive Dashboards have been designed to provide updated progress on all these data fields at various levels, such as national, Regional Office (RO) level, Project Implementation Unit (PIU) level & project level. The data for these dashboards is submitted at an individual project level by the responsible Project Director, and is reviewed at regular frequency at the level of the NHAI Chairman and NHAI Members. An in-built algorithm automatically highlights focus projects with key pending issues, so that focused interventions for these projects can be discussed during these reviews. Apart from dashboards views of data, the PMIS is also enabled with Geographical Information System (GIS), which provides a geographical visualization of all NHAI projects on an India map. This is a unique feature of PMIS, which enables geo-visualization of projects rather than searching through a database.

The PMIS has enabled significant progress, with a 32% increase in construction in 2016-17 over the previous year, and with over 60% of the projects identified in 2016 with issues, now being back on track.

To facilitate access to the PMIS, which was so far available as a desktop version, NHAI has now launched a PMIS App in coordination with the Boston Consulting Group. The App, available in both Android and Apple versions, will be accessible to all of its officers in the Field and Headquarters, and will enable access to any project dashboard in just two clicks of a button. The App also comes with a host of additional features – a Task Manager, so that tasks can be assigned and tracked through the organization; a Photo Upload functionality, so that Project Directors can click photos at project site and upload the latest status on PMIS; a Check-In feature, so that every visit to a site by an RO / PD can be tracked; and quick access to Stalled Issues, which are issues flagged with projects that have not been resolved in 30 days.